Your website is often the first place a new customer gets to know your business. Before a customer calls, emails, or walks through your door, they ponder if your company looks trustworthy, and if they can help their immediate needs.
After 25+ years of building and fixing websites for businesses of all sizes and markets, I see the same problems again and again. Here are five signs your site might be turning people away, and what to do about each one.
1. It looks fine on your computer, but not on a phone
Most of us build, edit, and proof our websites on a laptop or desktop. Meanwhile, plenty of your visitors are pulling it up on a phone, often comparing a few options. If the text is tiny, the buttons are hard to tap, or they have to pinch and scroll sideways, they'll simply leave.
Quick check: Pull up your site on your own mobile phone right now and try to find your contact number and your main service. If it takes effort, your visitors feel that too.
2. Visitors can't tell what you do within a few seconds
People are notorious for skimming. When someone lands on your homepage, they should be able to answer three questions almost instantly: 1. What do you offer, 2. Who is it for, and 3. What should I do next?
Quick fix: Rewrite your main headline as one plain sentence: "We [do what] for [who]." Then add one obvious button, like "Get a quote" or "Book a call."
3. Contacting you takes detective work
If someone is ready to reach out, every extra click is a chance for them to change their mind. Contact details buried three pages deep, a form with ten required fields, or a "Contact" link that's hard to spot all quietly cost you leads.
Quick fix: Put your phone number or email in the header or footer of every page, and keep your contact form short: name, email, and a custom message is usually plenty.
4. The information is out of date
Old business hours, a holiday banner from two years ago, a copyright year that stopped in 2021, or a team page with someone who left. Small details like these make a difference to a potential customer.
Quick fix: Set a calendar reminder once a quarter to skim every page for anything that's changed: hours, prices, photos, staff, dates, etc.
5. It feels slow, cluttered, or hard to read
Oversized photos that take forever to load, walls of text, light gray writing on a white background, and a different font every few lines all make a site tiring to use. If visitors have to squint or wait, they don't stick around long enough to see how good your business is.
Quick fix: Resize photos before you upload them, stick to one or two fonts, break long text into short paragraphs, and make sure your text has strong contrast against its background. Text over busy backgrounds are hard to read, so try to avoid this.
A 15-minute check you can do today
- Open your site on your mobile phone and try to contact yourself.
- Read your homepage headline out loud. Would a stranger understand it?
- Look for anything outdated: hours, prices, dates, or photos.
- Ask a friend who doesn't know your business to find one specific thing on your site, and watch where they get stuck.
You don't have to fix everything at once. Start with the one problem that sticks out to you most, and give it a week. Small, steady improvements add up faster than you'd expect.
If you'd like a second set of eyes, I'm happy to provide a free website audit. Get in touch and tell me about your site.